lichtundlaerm

Thank you very much, Josh!

X-T1, XF 10-24 Processed from the RAW in Lightroom using the Monochrome-G profile and corrected the exposure ever so slightly to match the +0.3EV OOC JPG. Nothing else. Shows just how good those Fuji B&W profiles are.

Together with today's shot comes a slight change of plans: While I initially wanted to show some of the street shots also in here, I've decided to make a dedicated thread in the respective forum. Check it out here: The streets of Vietnam. Besides that, there's not much to talk about today. It's another one from the boat trip I mentioned above. Lan Ha Bay (as seen from a ridge on Monkey Island):

Hi everybody! During Christmas 2014, me and my girlfriend spent three weeks traveling through the northern half of Vietnam. The tour was (unsurprisingly) more or less: Hanoi --> Cat Ba --> Ninh Binh --> Hue --> Hoi An Wait... what? Heard that somewhere before? Well, that's right. This is the second of two "twin threads". Check out the (rather mediocre) landscapes over here. After having a long, hard second look at all the pictures, I decided to make a dedicated thread for the street shots. Normally, I would consider myself more of a landscape photographer, but I have definitely shot far better landscapes with my trusty X-T1 than on this trip. And even after several months back, I still like the documentary-style shots way better than the landscapes. One reason might very well be that with all the heavy-DSLR-lugging tourists everywhere, the X-T1 made me feel rather unobstrusive, so I had no problem getting in close and establishing some sort of contact with the people I shot. Or in some cases - take a few steps back: This was also the trip that made me seriously fall in love with the 35mm-equivalent (which was the XF 23mm 1.4 back then... and which also led to an additional X100T later on... *sigh*). So, let's get this finally started with the... Streets of Hanoi, Part I Make no mistake - If you're not used to Asia, arriving in Hanoi will come to you like a shock. Well, it certainly did for me. The smog made breathing pretty heavy already when we left the airport. The taxi ride into the city gave us a glimpse of the madness that's called traffic which would await us in the Old Town. People keep telling you and they do because it's true: It does take you something like half an hour to cross the street at first. Unless you have a death wish. After half a day, however, I got used to the constant madness, crossing the street became merely a matter of not looking left and right, walking at a constant pace, trusting the motorbikes to drive past you and NOT EVER STOPPING ONCE YOU STARTED WALKING. It's about then when your attention is drawn to all the things that are going on around you at the side of the streets: This fairly quickly made me finally fall in love with the city. I don't know how other tourist experiences are, but I felt pretty much unhasseled and safe wherever I went. And the food is absolutely delicious - we pretty much started eating street food right away and never had any issues. Sitting on a plastic chair within all the chaos, scrubbing your spoon and chopsticks clean, eating ridiculously delicious noodles of all varieties, served with fresh herbs you've probably never tasted before (and which you share with pretty much everyone near the food stall) is just a great experience. Oh, and did I mention the cà phê sữa? Try the coffee! Drink the coffee! Love the cof... okay, I guess you got it.

Same thing here. Actually looks EXACTLY the same. Any input would be appreciated.

So here's another one that's more "landscape"ish. When we've been to the area of Ninh Binh (aka "the dry Ha Long Bay"), we didn't stay in the city itself but in a homestay in a tiny village a few kilometers away. It was a great way of seeing how the people actually lived, a fun experience and in the midst of beautiful landscape. This spot was in 5 minutes walking distance to our room and captures the "remoteness" of the place very vell.

I've got both the X100T and the XF 23mm/1.4 on the X-T1. It's a mess, because YES, the lens is THAT much better than the X100T (not that there's too much wrong with it, the XF is just pretty damn awesome), and the X100T is just THAT much smaller and far less heavy. I feel the difference is even bigger than in the "VS." So I can't really get myself to part ways with either one of them. Anyway: I got the XF first and with a 150€ cashback, so it was a different story. It was what made me fall in love with the 35-equivalent and the desire for something lighter and smaller. In your case, for only 10% off, I think it's a waste of $$$ unless you really NEED the additional speed or find yourself shooting the X100S really often very close and wide open, because that's the situation where the XF really excells. Hope I could help.

Aside from the fact that I never really understood all the fuzz about the very last bit of detail (*), I realized something while editing some of my old D7000 pictures: I have the impression that the LR/X-Trans combination is simply much more unforgiving when it comes to a little bit of misfocus, diffraction blur, lens "softness" or whatever. I felt like I could disguise this better with the Nikon images. The Fuji-"watercolor" effect only seemed to set in for pictures where something was a little bit "off". Could explain some of the ambiguous results of different users. Nevertheless, I found settings that are probably less sharp and more noisy than what most other people are going for, but produce much more pleasing images (for me) than I ever could with the Nikon and that are (again: for me) far, FAR superior to what the In-Camera JPG engine does. So in the end, LR5 works fine for me. (*) Side note: Seriously, whenever I start pixel-peeping I realize at some point it's just because my picture is actually crap. If the picture is good, it's still good even if the last teeny-weeny bit of sharpness lacks, especially since 99.9% of the pictures are presented online or in less-than-1:1-prints anyway... However, I don't do photography for a living (or customers), so I may have a different point of view and set of requirements here. I'm in the luxurious position that I am the only one who decides if it's good (enough).

Thanks a lot Absolutely no problem!

Another one from Vietnam, this time from Lan Ha Bay. We did a boat trip that day, the conditions were great for boat tripping and crappy for photography - more or less perfect blue skies. However, when we came around this corner and I saw the lonely fihser's hut, with the net bathed in a single splash of sunlight - it was very beautiful. Took me some processing though to transport what I saw to an image that captures the feeling (screw you, dynamic range of the human eye!). Hope it worked...

Thank you all for the nice words! There's more coming soon, I'm still figuring out how to "use" the forum, gallery etc. @josh: Yeah, Hoi An was great and I'm looking forward to showing the pictures here. As I can see you've already been to my blog, so you more or less know what's coming However: Could you please "edit out" my picture you posted above? I wanted to show it at a later date, I'm not a 100% satisfied with the editing. Thanks!